#and I think not only is it kind of racist to assume every Middle Eastern man is more sexist than non Middle Eastern men

[radfemreblogs]

his name, accent and disregard for her kinda adds up as solidly middle eastern. lol.

We know the person in the story is a sexist man. To bring up the fact that he is Middle Eastern as it ‘might explain’ his sexism is the move the blame for his sexism from him being male to him being Middle Eastern.

Men everywhere are sexist. They do not have race, ethnicity or culture in common and are still sexist. The problem is not one particular cultural group of men, it is men.

[vaiyamagic]

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately complaining about people (mostly Americans) who blame the public education system for not knowing something. Usually, they state that even if the school didn't teach you the thing, then you should have looked it up yourself. These posts are usually full of blame and shame and often very mean.

And look. It's not that easy.

No. No, listen.

Yes, looking up something yourself is a very useful skill that everyone should practice. But it is a skill you have to LEARN. And a lot of these people who are making and reblogging these posts, insisting that people who dont look things up themselves are stupid and lazy are also reblogging and making posts about how search engines are unreliable now, and how libraries and public spaces are disappearing, and how news articles and scientific papers are all behind paywalls, and how misinformation is abundant even in places that used to be reliable, and how AI is going to get people killed because it's seeping everywhere and people are believing it.

So which is it? Is it easy to just look something up for yourself or not?

There are tutorials now on how to circumvent the misinformation. If you need a tutorial, then it's not intuitive, and it's a skill that needs to be learned. So what if no one is there to teach you? Sure, you can still learn on your own, but it's much harder and slower of a process.

And what about people who never even had a reason to consider that they SHOULD look something up? How many posts have you seen about asexuality or aromantisism, for example, where the person is basically saying "that was an option???" Sometimes you think you understand something, and you go through life with no one contradicting that understanding, why would you ever think to challenge that yourself?

And that's not even considering the people who grew up brainwashed, whether because of religion or a cult or abuse. "Don't listen to them, they're wrong, listen to me and only me because I'm right. Because I say so. No, don't look at external things for learning, only read what I provide you. Those other things are wrong, and if you believe them you are stupid. Would I lie to you?"

That's really hard to unlearn.

And it doesn't help when media protrays a particular thing one way: The posts making fun of the orange filter for any movie set in Mexico, for example. The fact that every photo you ever see of the pyramids makes it look like there isn't a trace of civilization nearby when actually there's a city right. there. Basically, every portrayal of any Middle Eastern country being full of nothing but sand and terrorists.

Is it racist? Absolutely. But you are not immune to propaganda. No one is. Especially not young impressionable children. And if they're never shown an alternative, then they will likely assume that what they're seeing is the way it is. No one has ever contradicted it before. No one has shown them another way, so why would they even consider that there IS another way?

So when someone acknowledges that they were wrong, and sites the reason being public education, maybe don't jump down their throat and make them feel stupid for not knowing something, and instead understand that unlearning is hard. The idea that something that you thought you could trust, that was reliable, is not, is a difficult concept to accept.

Maybe instead of yelling at someone for not knowing something or knowing how to do something, encourage them to learn more. Maybe show them HOW to learn. HOW to ask. And maybe understand that you too will be in that position someday, where something you thought was true was just a lie or a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation, and hope that someone will be kind to you instead of making you ashamed. Because shame doesn't help people want to learn.

Choose kindness.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Refuge (2023)

The best thing I can say about Refuge is that it has its heart in the right place. Though the evil in this horror film comes from Afghanistan, writer Ben Sztajnkrycer and director Renny Harlin really want to make it clear that not all Middle Easterners are terrorists and that the Afghan immigrants living in the United States are our friends. That’s admirable but it doesn’t make up for a lack of scares or a story you’ve seen so many times it’s more likely to put you to sleep than give you nightmares.

After a tour in Afghanistan, Sergeant Rick Pedroni (Aston McAuley) returns home after a strange incident. His wife, Kate (Sophie Simnett) hardly recognizes the quiet, cheerless man before her now. After sudden fits of violence, nightmares and events that can only be described as "supernatural", Kate reaches out to Ibrahim (Raza Jaffrey), an Imam at a nearby temple, for help.

Some trivia I read claims producer Gary Lucchesi was inspired by the 2017 National Geographic Article “Behind the Mask: Revealing the Trauma of War”, detailing a type of art therapy that has veterans use masks to express the way they feel on the inside. I was stunned to learn this because while watching, you’ll swear the mask therapy stuff is all made up. Every person we see at the clinic wears something that would be at home in one of the “Purge” movies, except for Rick, whose mask looks like a paper bag soaked in dirty water. The evil spirit possessing him eventually spreads to the clinic's other patients, making the guys already wearing creepy masks act creepy. I was going to criticize the film for doing the obvious thing… but the masks in the article are creepier than they aren’t, so it’s merely taking advantage of a real-life unsettling visual. If anything, that's a strength.

Continuing down this line, we can see why this film was made. We know soldiers come back from armed conflict with PTSD. Rick’s father, Sebastian (Jason Flemyng), still has nightmares and it’s been decades since he saw combat. The idea of your loved one returning as a different person is scary enough. What if what everyone assumes is PTSD is something even more serious? Something… satanic? That’s a good idea but unfortunately, the creativity stopped there. Everything in this film you’ve seen before and better. The demonic possession scenes aren’t shocking or frightening, they don’t showcase any new visuals, say anything interesting about the human psyche or reveal anything about what war does to people. The “exorcism” performed is pretty standard, with the key to defeating the wicked spirit being the kind of thing that makes you go “I guess that’s clever… but it also seems way too easy”.

I mentioned the film’s good intentions earlier. These are showcased primarily in the scenes with Ibrahim, his wife Rasha (Mila Lyutskanova) and their teenage son, Farid (Shervin Alenabi). There’s tension between the men because Farid has been getting into trouble. The police officer who keeps bringing him back home hasn’t been too subtle about his racist views. Farid is fed up with the hate he encounters. When Kate comes to them for help, Farid sees her as just another white woman who didn’t care about them until she needed their help. He thinks the evil spirit isn't their problem. Ibrahim wants to help and his wife is like “Well, is helping these people you don’t know really worth it?” For the wife of an Imam, she’s not very sympathetic, particularly this isn't some charity handout she's asking for, it's an exorcism. The best thing I can say about those scenes is that their heart is in the right place. It doesn’t make them any less clichéd.

The performances in Refuge are not strong but in the actors’ defense, the material they’ve working with is forgettable. Writer Ben Sztajnkrycer doesn’t have a lot of credits to his name but he's been working on feature-length films since 2006. As for directory Renny Harlin, it's time to accept he’s not the same director who made Die Hard 2 anymore. Among its many flaws, Refuge isn’t scary and even when it’s genuine, it feels phony. (October 2, 2024)

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, I loved your post about queerness in historical fiction. I was wondering if you could help me find a better way to explain (or know of someone who could) to the white (usually male) fans of Tolkien who are currently losing their minds because in the series for Amazon they have cast Sir Lenny Henry (a black man) as a hobbit. It feels like the exact same argument that was dealt with when Anya Chalotra was cast as Yennefer for The Witcher. It just seems like only white people are screaming that the entire cast must be white in both the case of the Witcher and Middle Earth in order to be "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" when it's all fantasy. I'm a white person and I don't get it. It's really frustrating that the only way to convince them that people of color should be allowed to play characters who aren't evil-doers is to bring up the existence of the potato in both Middle Earth and The Witcher. In this most recent fight, I've been called all kinds of names (one dude keeps saying I'm racist when I haven't brought up race or anything like that) and it's ridiculous because Henry was cast as a Harfoot who were hobbits with dark skin that they claim means Mediterranean not Black.

Ooof. I admire your initiative, I really do, but also: there comes a point where all good-faith efforts are totally futile, because these people don't actually WANT their beliefs challenged, and there won't be anything you can do about it except to exhaust yourself. You can throw all the material or documentary evidence at them that you want, but it won't work, because racism, white superiority, and the assumption of a monolithically white medieval history are a helluva drug. They are eager to split ridiculous hairs like "dark skin means Mediterranean instead of black" because, well, racism, whether or not they want to acknowledge that. Because Mediterranean is at least European, whereas for them, Black is Bad, Inferior, or otherwise Unacceptable. This doesn't even get into the types who want to claim that Ancient Rome (which was rather notably, y'know, Mediterranean and North African) was actually lily-white, because even dark-skinned Southern and Eastern Europeans can't ultimately make the racist cut.

Tolkien himself obviously had problems with his depiction of race and racialized people (witness the Haradrim, "men from the South," being the only people of colour in the story and generalized as an indiscriminate evil force fighting for Sauron against the white/Northern European heroes). That's not to say Tolkien was actively racist (see: the letter he wrote to the Nazi German would-be publishers of The Hobbit, inviting them cordially to get fucked), but it does mean that he was steeped in the usual assumptions and expectations of a white upper-class British man in the 1920s and 1930s, and not least the mindset that the (white) rulers of the (nonwhite) British Empire were superior, morally correct, and the privileged resisters of "evil" political systems. (This isn't even getting into how Germany was admired throughout the long 19th century for its perceived cultural and social superiority, the American eugenics movement directly influenced the Nazis, a lot of people thought that Hitler's only mistake was being too obviously crazy, and America and Britain only actively entered World War II when their territory/perceived global power was infringed upon.)

White people tend to assume that if they personally don't hold discriminatory attitudes (and they usually do, just because that's what society has taught them for almost all of modern history), they can't be racist, and it's a personal insult to call them that. They know that Racism Is Bad, but likewise, it's always someone else's fault, not theirs. See the huge brouhaha over the supposed plan to teach "critical race theory" in American public schools, which is really just acknowledging that centuries of racism and discrimination have created a system that disadvantages people of color at every level. This is absolute heresy for today's right wing (which has become ever more extreme, reactionary, and historically amnesiac) to admit. They can admit historical racism, sometimes, maybe, only in demonstrably "bad" people, but as far as they're concerned, there was no lingering effect whatsoever, and it's "un-American" (read: anti-white supremacist) to insist otherwise. Land of the free! Everyone treated the same! Etc. etc. The continued inferior or disadvantaged life outcomes of people of color is, according to these types, simply a result of them not being motivated/ambitious/smart enough to fix their own broken circumstances. Those centuries of genocide, cultural destruction, use as literal chattel slaves, etc, has nothing to do with it.

If this sounds ridiculous: well, obviously, it is. But as reactionary mindsets have become troublingly normalized and social media has allowed people to spread both passively and actively racist content to unprecedented degrees, it has also leaked into media. The type of white-man-fan you're arguing with won't accept any "historically accurate" argument for the inclusion of non-white people, even as they're staking their own (bad) arguments on that hill. This is because they want to claim the sole privilege to create a nostalgic/imagined/fantasy space that looks just like them. Their underlying belief is that people of color never had any power or consequential role in history, and shouldn't have, so they don't want to see a space, even an explicitly fantastic/non-historical setting (like LOTR, The Witcher, GOT, etc.), where this is the case. Whether or not they want to say it, or even if they're aware of it, they feel that even if they've been unhappily forced to accept a small lessening of their cultural power just because we no longer automatically accept that white men get to run everything, they at least can take comfort in a (white) past. And now, or so they think, the "politically correct" types also want to ruin their racist fantasy comfort zone. They can't even escape from multiculturalism in media, as it too has become steadily more diverse.

Basically: it's racism, Jan. It's many levels of racism, you can't argue those people out of it, and you have to identify and understand that, especially since their favorite diversionary tactic will be the schoolyard maneuver of going, "no, YOU'RE the racist!!!"

(Also: "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" should tell you everything you need to know. These people know absolutely nothing about history, but that won't prevent them from weaponising it in defense of the perceived threat to their cultural and racial domination. Besides, yet again, fantasy universes have no claim to historical accuracy, and if you say that, I assume you just want to feel justified in creating a fictional universe where the only powerful/consequential people are white heterosexual western European-coded men, because you not-so-secretly wish it was still that way in reality.)

[waywardwrestlewritingwaif]

In a Parallel Universe

Could it be... fluff? The happy, uplifting tone of this can entirely be credited to Mustafa as a muse. I truly believe the man should be held up as an example of how to be a good human and how to be masculine without it becoming toxic. (The way he is treated by WWE, much like that other paragon of positive masculinity Sami Zayn, is something I can angrily rant about another time.) 

Pairing: Mustafa Ali x reader (platonic)

Word count: 2,659

Content advisory: Racism/ racist language

“Did you ever have a thing for me?”

Your eyes widen in shock as you look back at Mustafa, your best friend, wondering if you’ve heard him correctly. He’s looking at you with those big, ingenuous eyes, as if he’s just asked you if you’ve decided what you want for dinner. In all the time you’ve known each other you’ve never once brought up the subject of romantic interest or physical attraction and yet here he is, just throwing it out there. 

You’re watching your daughters collaborate on a colouring project that might as well be “Guernica” for how seriously they’re taking it. 

The bell-like laughter of his wife and mother-in-law is drifting in from the back patio where they’re taking some much-needed time alone together. 

You’re waiting on your husband Jake, who’s already sent four apologetic texts about how the Saturday he’s been called into work keeps dragging on, promising that he’ll be there as soon as he can, but that he doesn’t expect you to hold up the barbeque just for him. (Even though he knows you will.)

You laugh a little and squint at him, as if what he’s asked is somehow ridiculous. But it’s not ridiculous. Two heterosexual people who’ve been close friends for so long… it would almost be weird if there hadn’t been any sexual tension. Nevertheless, you think of just rolling your eyes and blowing the subject off. It would be easy enough to do. But his unwavering earnestness has always demanded respect and honesty and it’s possible that he knows the answer already. You certainly do. 

“I guess,” you begin, aware that your voice is wavering a little, “early on. I had a bit of a crush.”

Is that the truth? In as much as feeling can be summed up in so few words, yes. It wasn’t like you’d been pining and crying yourself to sleep at night, but sure, you’d felt it. You’d approached him to ask if you could train with him after the two of you had worked a few of the same local shows where the wrestlers outnumbered the audience members. Yes, you’d been beyond impressed with his skills but you’d also noticed how very, very cute he was.

“I mean, everyone did,” you assure him. “All the girls liked you.”

Not all the girls had your confidence or your desire to really break in to the wrestling world, though. So you’d been the one to steel yourself and walk up to him at the gym one night and ask if he’d help you. It was a calculated risk, you figured: he could refuse, he could give it a shot and get bored or irritated and walk away, he could help you become a better wrestler even if he wasn’t interested in more, he could feel your skills were hopeless but also decide you were attractive enough to pursue, or he could want to be both a training partner and something more. Five possible outcomes, three of which worked in your favour. You’d always been clever with numbers and the numbers clearly gave you a better than even chance of a positive result. 

He laughs shyly and looks down at the idea that “all the girls” had found him attractive. It’s not that he’s ever been insecure about his looks and charm, exactly, but he’s never been the sort of arrogant prick who’s assumed everyone must be in love or lust with him. And that’s always been part of his charm; confident enough not to seem needy but humble enough to appreciate the attention. 

Of course, you’ve always been a little surprised that he doesn’t have more of an ego. The luscious mane of black hair, the smile that could power a small city, the toned body that never crossed into that lumpy, bulgy look that too many of your counterparts developed, and most of all those huge, soulful eyes… The man was infuriatingly flawless and even now it’s not like you are immune to the occasional whisper of desire.  

“Shit. I never did anything to hurt you, did I?”

And then there was the personality. Mustafa had always been too great of a guy to be real. He’d been your rock. Whenever things ground you down, he was the one who could build you up again. When you got angry and depressed at the state of the world, he’d commiserate but he’d also be able to give you hope, if only because a world that produced someone as awesome as he was couldn’t be all bad. 

You could honestly say that without him, you’d never have fought your way out of the indies and into the big leagues. That wasn’t just because training with him made you a stronger, better wrestler. It was because the two of you had been able to lean on each other when things were rough. And damn, things had been rough at times. 

When the two of you had graduated from bar shows for disinterred old men drinking watered-down beer and playing slot machines, you’d been beyond excited. The shows you got invited to took place in gymnasiums and legion halls and church basements with actual audiences who had come specifically to watch the wrestling. You knew it wasn’t the big time; you were excited, not stupid. But it was progress and a lot of people you knew hadn’t even made it that far. You’d grounded yourselves by talking about your meager pay and by calculating how much you’d earned per bruise at each show. 

One of the larger, or at least more successful promotions that had booked you had provided an eye-opening experience. The promoter was a corpulent man with a mouth full of lumps that barely counted as teeth and breath to match. He’d called both two of you aside a few hours before your first show to tell you the gimmick that he had in mind for the two of you. It had come as a bit of a surprise because although you were friends, you’d never teamed up in the ring. You’d reveled in being the foul-mouthed heel, while he had, of course, been a natural baby face. (And if you were honest, so few people knew who you were that your characters hadn’t ever mattered.)

“I wanna do a thing with the two of you,” the promoter began, sweat already dampening his forehead and staining the armpits of his cheap shirt. “You two are gonna be like a pair of terrorists. You can fight all the American guys- and girls- and get them over with the crowd. Get the audience riled up.”

The two of you had stared back at him in horror, jaws slack. 

“I’m thinking something like ‘Osama and Elle Qaeda’ for your names.” His brow furrowed as he processed another idea. “Can you come up with some shit to yell in Arabic?”

You remembered thinking that it must be some kind of joke. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were products of the Arabian Peninsula. Mustafa’s parents were Pakistani and Indian. Yours were Kurds from southern Turkey. Not one of your parents even spoke Arabic. But more to the point, the two of you were American. You were both born and bred in Chicago. Neither of you had any hint of an accent. Why couldn’t you just be normal? 

The promoter looked at you impatiently. Mustafa recovered his voice enough to stammer through an explanation of your ethnicity, only to be greeted with a look of supreme indifference and boredom. 

“Look,” he said sharply, “it doesn’t matter. You have the look. Around here you’re all sand ni-“

Remembering that night still hurts. The pain has dulled over time because at the moment he’d said it, it felt like you’d been shot in the chest. For a few moments you’d been afraid that you were actually going to vomit. Growing up in a racially mixed area, your features and your family name had been ambiguous enough that people thought that people usually guessed that you were Greek or Italian before they got to Turkish or even broadly Middle Eastern. You’d been proud to declare that you were descended from the little-known but courageous and resilient Kurds. But out here in the wider world, you were an Arab and therefore a terrorist. The Indian subcontinent, birthplace of so many cultures, arts, religions and philosophies, crossroads of empires, might as well have never existed. Mustafa was an Arab and therefore a terrorist. 

Seeing what he perceived as hesitation, the promoter scowled at both of you. “Give it a shot,” he counseled. “It’s the only way people are gonna take you seriously.”  

You and Mustafa smile at each other, as if you’ve both been recalling the painful judgments you’d faced together, as if you’re amazed you survived let alone flourished. You’d pulled each other through. 

“I’d always kind of wondered if you’d ever liked me,” he says shyly. 

Yes, you think, you had. You were a tall, muscular girl. It had made sense that you work with a male training partner. So he’d been happy to work with you and you were thrilled to be able to learn from him. You felt yourself improving every time you practiced together. But your mind had often drifted to how it would feel to have his arms wrapped around you in other circumstances. More than once you’d been tempted to close the scant distance between your lips just to see how he’d react. 

“I liked you,” he adds, eyes snapping up to see your reaction. 

You do your best to mask your shock. “You did?”

“Sure. C’mon, look at you.”

Your mouth feels a little dry. The sounds from the patio have faded and even the children have fallen silent. 

“Maybe not right away because I thought you were kind of scary, to be honest,” he chuckles. “But after we’d been hanging around, I don’t know, about a year or so, I really liked you.”

You can’t help but laugh at the idea that you were scary. Maybe you’d thought you could be scary to some of the smaller, less experienced women you’d fought. But to someone on your level both skill-wise and vertically? No. 

“I’m serious. I wasn’t desperate or anything but I remember thinking a lot about what might have happened if I’d made a move.”

You wonder about the math in your head. You hadn’t entertained those thoughts about him for all that long. Sure he was hot, but as you’d risen through the ranks together, he’d quickly come to seem like a brother. The idea of the two of you being a couple had started to seem weird. You’d thought about it less the longer you spent together, so it was strange for you to think that as you’d gotten over your initial crush, he’d begun thinking of you in that way.

Your shared reverie is interrupted as his little girl climbs into his lap, sour-faced and frustrated that she’s running out of brown crayons. The work of art that your girls are creating relies heavily on earth tones for the ground, for the tree trunks and bushes, and, you note happily, for the different faces of the people occupying the epic landscape they’ve made. There are all sorts of shades of people and there just aren’t enough brown crayons to build the different tones. 

Your daughter purses her lips in a look of stubborn determination you’ve come to know all too well. She’s grabbed red crayons, orange crayons, yellow crayons, green crayons, whatever she can get her hands on to colour in her people. She’s as upset as her friend that there aren’t enough browns but she would never let on. As ridiculous as it seems, you’re actually a little intimidated by just how headstrong she is. Now that she’s learned the alphabet, she seems like she’s about ready to move out and start kicking ass. 

She casts a quick glance in your direction and you have to hold back a gasp at her fierce, beautiful eyes. Looking at her face, you’re gob smacked by the idea that something that gorgeous came out of you. It’s like looking at the sun. It’s even stranger to think that she could be the product of the wild, all-encompassing lust that you and your husband had- still have- for each other. How could something that seemed so deliciously sinful produce something so perfect?

You glance back at Mustafa, whose attention is now completely absorbed in his daughter’s lecture on the need for more brown crayons. She’s articulate far beyond her years and you hope beyond hope that years of school won’t convince her to hide her intelligence the way girls of your generation did. 

It’s possible that there was a time when your desire for Mustafa and his for you overlapped, that there was an opening when the two of you could have touched lips and fallen into each other as if nothing else in the world existed. The two of you would probably have been a power couple in the industry. Your dazzling combination of skills would have been irresistible. With the way your families have come to love the both of you, it’s likely they would have moved beyond the cultural differences that absolutely do exist, no matter what some ignorant arsehole might have told you when he insisted you were both Arab terrorists. 

And it is most definitely possible that the two of you would be sitting in a living room just like this, embracing as you observed your children colouring or playing video games, or chasing each other around with rubber swords, or, worst of all, trying to emulate what they saw their parents doing on television. And perhaps as you watched, you’d look at each other and touch lips with all the tenderness in your souls and you would be filled to the point of bursting with happiness. 

But then there would be no…

There would be no Jake, the man who made you realize what true, unadulterated love really was. You would never have had someone make you laugh the way that he can, make you laugh so much that your ribs ache for hours. There would never have been the man who taught you how to curse in Irish or how to snowboard. And you would not have your daughter, so filled with her father’s sarcasm and stubbornness. 

For that matter, you would never have had Mustafa’s wife as your friend. When Jake had been hit by a car while riding his bike to work, you would not have had her comforting arms and her voice to pull you through the agonizing days when doctors cautioned you not to be too hopeful about his prognosis. You would never have had that feeling of someone strong enough to hold you up yet tender enough to nurture you through the pain. 

A few hours later, the gang of you are gathered around the picnic-style table in the back yard. Mustafa, his wife, her parents, you, Jake, his brother who’s been run ragged by his job more than any of you, and, of course, your children. You’re all laughing so hard that it’s a legitimate danger that the neighbours will call the police with a noise complaint. You make a clever joke and Jake, impressed by your wit as he always is, presses a light kiss against your neck. You feel the familiar thrill move through you, suddenly thinking that it’s time to wind things down and head home. Just for a second, your eyes connect with Mustafa’s and there is this perfect, still moment when you can see that there could be an alternate universe where the two of you would be together, something that might have been better or worse or neither. But then the moment is passed, and you’re once again back in this universe with the lives that you love.

[nightcoremoon]

ethnic genocide is... kind of worse than the criminalization of queerness because like. if you kill all members of an ethnicity, like tutsis or palestinians or armenians or something, that's it, their culture is gone, they're dead. people of different ethnicities can't just rachel dolezal their way into it. the yahi died with ishi and the only remnants of the yahi are through works of the le guins' chronicling his life. it's tragic and it's unfixable. if hitler succeeded in decimating the jews and the romani, they would no longer exist. there are dozens, no, hundreds of native american tribes that were exterminated by the colonists. an estimated hundred million natives lived here before columbus came. and now? there's five million. there are less natives alive today than there were jews murdered during the holocaust. the white invaders killed about 8 times as many people as hitler did. even if the forced sterilizations didn't happen, and even if every single native american alive today got someone pregnant or been impregnated, and even if every single one of them did so with a person of a different ethnicity, and even if the infant mortality rate was zero, even including twins at 3%, even rounding up, even blessing all of them with immortality, even assuming all of them were old enough to consent to and have sex, there is still only a maximum of 6 million native americans able to be born every year. it would take a constant 15 years just to replace who was lost. an estimated 24% of women were sterilized so that's 17 years. if half of all babies had both a native mother and father, that's 24 years. infant mortality for natives is 9%, so that's 25. assuming minors comprise 1/6 of the population, that's 27 years. and keep in mind this doesn't even take into account all of the natives who were born FOR THE PAST 500 YEARS. it's disgusting what was done to them, but this isn't about just the natives even though holy shit I never put it into actual mathematical perspective before and I am significantly more enraged on their behalf than I was before, and that much more understanding of their own righteous fury. giving the land back is the bare fucking minimum for reparations. but anyway.

so yeah, ethnic genocide is really bad. and so is, you know, just for example, the aids crisis. 125,000 AT LEAST people died from aids. most were gay. half as much as corona victims, and 0.5% of the american populace. several people from that time period have said that it wiped out entire swathes of gay people. the entire gay community was decimated. but here we are 25 or so years later and the united states is just... absolutely saturated with queer people. lil nas x is the most popular musician right now. this is a good thing. we've bounced back. we've rebuilt. and we've been able to do so because cishets can give birth to queer kids, who grow up to become queer adults. you cannot get rid of us, because there will always be more of us.

homophobia is horrible of course, and every single government that criminalizes being gay should be erased [not the people because that is genocide which I have previously established as BAD, but governments are not people, they are just the artificial systems developed by the people in power], I don't condone any mass murder of any sort, and civil rights are human rights. I'm not disputing that. white gays don't fuckin REEE at me, I'm literally one of you.

but our experiences are incomparable to theirs.

and when I say "our", I obviously fucking know that there are plenty of Native American, Black, Latine, Asian, Middle Eastern, Slavic, Pacific Islander, and other various people of color who are also queer. I'm not a moron. I don't think that there's only white queers. if you had any reading comprehension at all you'd know that I'm comparing the experience of the white gay directly to the experience of the person of color because a predominant majority of people of color are cishets. and if "they're not cishet if they're from a culture that views gender and sexuality differently from us" then obviously their definitions of homosexual lesbian bi and trans are also different you dumb fuck so shut up and don't drum up any bullshit semantics discourse because I'm not reading any of it. when I say "our" I mean specifically people who have ONLY experienced discrimination based on their gender or sexuality and not any based on their ethnicity (and in the specific sphere of relevance in this post I'm only discussing queer affiliation and ethnicity, and this isn't to suggest that religion and ability and misogyny don't also affect these but I'm not going to talk about that right at this moment), for the sole purpose of making a point that is specifically about gender or sexuality and ethnicity. okay? you got it?

racism is an exponentially bigger problem.

they're both problems but they're not equal in scope. white queers have privilege over cishet poc in the same way visibly abled people have privilege over invisibly abled. you can't look at a person and immediately know if they're gay or trans but you CAN look at a person and know they're brown.

and you could theoretically kill every single queer person alive right now, but in 20 years there's just gonna be more of us. we're like a zucchini farm in that respect. we've always been here and we always will be here.

but you can't say the same for people of color.

ethnic genocide is a very real and very pressing matter that is currently affecting millions.

so it's our duty as white people to at the very goddamn least pay attention to what people of color are saying, and not say dumb shit that's racist, and point out to other people when they say dumb shit that's racist. and it's really easy to just, NOT fight brown people because you're gay and therefore just as oppressed. no. it just doesn't work that way.

black lives matter

protect asian lives

[kattahj]

Thoughts on The Last Wish (the first Witcher book)

Fair warning: this is decidedly mixed and with plenty of show-book comparisons that aren't always in the book's favour (though sometimes they are).

I wasn't at all sure that I wanted to read the Witcher books. I may love the TV show, but the question "Would I like to read a version of this written by a dude in the 80s and 90s, with less focus on the female characters, and the kind of fanboys who throw a hissy fit when black people appear on screen?" was answered with "well, maybe". Especially when I started The Last Wish and got anonymous boobs (in the faaaaace) on page 1.

But I kept reading and I kind of enjoyed myself.

See, I'm a sucker for twisted fairy tales, and a large portion of this book consists of such twisted fairy tales. We get full chapters for Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and Hans-My-Hedgehog, as well as nods to Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, The Billy Goats Gruff, and probably more stuff that I've forgotten.

And yeah, it's action-heavy to the point of stupidity, and there's a lot of casual misogyny, but it's still fun. Even if it's fun I sometimes hate myself for having.

Take the Beauty and the Beast chapter as an example. On one hand, the Beast is cursed while he rapes a priestess, and his true love is a homicidal vampire who has to die (graphically, with a stake between her breasts) for him to turn back. On the other hand, there's a lot of fun anecdotes about how merchants send their daughters to the Beast's castle as a way for them to earn some money before they marry someone else, and it's also fun to read about what a loser Beast is. But I do think there's a reason this one was the only adventure not to make it into the TV show (yet).

And Renfri may be an uncomfortable mix of murderer, victim, and fuck buddy, but I can't help it, I still enjoy reading about a Snow White who curses every other sentence and shacks upp with robbers. (I'm really sad Marilka isn't in the book, though. I liked that cheerfully psychopathic little girl.)

It's interesting that the circumstances around their battle are different from the show. Stregobor has locked himself away, and through stuff people tell Geralt about Renfri's gang, he realizes that she means to capture people at the market and give Stregobor an ultimatum: come down to be killed, or she'll murder the civilians one by one until he does. So Geralt kills off her entire gang to protect the town, and then Renfri returns, saying that Stregobor just laughed at her and wouldn't come down. The two of them fight, and as she dies she tries to trick him into holding her so she can kill him. So, yeah, book Renfri is a piece of work and Geralt's moral dilemma is a little bit lighter on him.

In general, the tone is a lot more outright humourous than in the TV show. There are still serious moments, but they're fewer and further between. It's also a lot chattier. There is a LOT of dialogue - Geralt is more talkative, and so is everyone else. It works fine for written text, but so much of it is exposition or random jokes that I understand why they'd cut it for the screen.

The stories are more expanded upon than they are on screen, which of course in many cases lead to much needed and appreciated context. In others, I quite like the changes made for TV. The situation with the elves, for instance, originally depend on a rather Deus ex machina type of solution - I prefer the way the TV elves and Geralt talked things out. (Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the way the book has the Sylvan and Jaskier playing music together afterwards. That was cute.) But then, the scene in the show is more hopeful that there can be a way for the elves to survive and both species to coexist. In the book, it's more, "Yup, you're all going to die, and that sucks, but humans are racist fucks and there's nothing to be done about that."

The stories are still told non-chronologically, though the system of doing so is a bit easier than what the show does - there are standalone adventures and then a frame story inbetween of Geralt recuperating at the temple, with each adventure tying into some aspect of his stay there. I quite like these slower parts, they're much needed between all the monster fighting. But as I understand it, the first four adventures were originally published in magazines, and the frame story and final two adventures were added later. I do think it shows, as the mood is different, and the last two adventures also more tied into Geralt's background and relationships than the others.

It does get a bit weird that Geralt's relationship with Yennefer, and her desire to have a child, are detailed at length through dialogue with the priestess Nenneke before we even meet Yennefer in the final chapter, but I guess this is an effect of how the stories were published. This part of the book was published after Sword of Destiny, and I'm assuming we get more of Yennefer there, and that most of the readers would already have encountered her by the time we get this. Nevertheless, when read like this, it's clunky.

OTOH, there actually isn't an orgy going on when Geralt meets Yennefer, so I'm not sure why the show added that. In the book there are only erotic statues, and a very naked, very seductive Yennefer. I still got a bit of a "yikes" vibe from the scene, though, especially since it's the first introduction in person to her (after the exposition), while in the show we've already known her for several episodes at that point. And then we get a bit about how as a sorcerer she can be attractive but never truly beautiful, because sorcerers are ugly women who are made pretty by magic and thus she has "an ugly woman's evil and cold eyes". Double yikes.

Interestingly, where show Yennefer hates that Geralt has tied their destinies together, book Yennefer is totally charmed by it.

Jaskier is even dimmer than he is in the show and not half as endearing. His second wish to the djinn is another "yikes" moment. In the show he wishes for his lover to return to him "with open arms, a cheerful heart, and very little clothing", which is already a bit iffy, but in the book he wishes that a countess who rejects every man will let him fuck her, which is... oy. But that's par for the course for these stories, unfortunately. :-(

I do enjoy the gentle ribbing Jaskier and Geralt have going on. Their relationship feels a lot more mutual. I hope to see more of that in season 2.

I also hope to see Nenneke, who is a matronly priestess from the frame story who treats Geralt with a combination of contempt, tenderness, and medical care. 

I don't know what could be made of Iola, who is, as it later turns out, the owner of the anonymous pair of breasts on page 1. She's a younger priestess who has given a vow of silence, which means she gets to fuck Geralt and listen to his tales without ever interrupting by telling him anything about herself, or indeed having any sort of personality. I honestly don't know if that character could ever be made palatable, but I kind of half want to see them try.

And yeah, it IS pretty noticeable that the three female characters in the book who are most unambiguously good (Iola, Lille, Pavetta) have next to no dialogue.

The Swedish translation mostly works well. Sometimes there's dialect and/or archaic language, usually for humorous effect, not enough of it to be irritating. (And I'm guessing that's in the original as well.) Jaskier is called Riddarsporre (Larkspur) in translation, which I'm sort of fine with. It's certainly better than them ignoring diacriticals and thus calling the horse Plotka, which means rumour - the original name is Płotka, which as we all know means Roach. Different words! (Translated to Swedish, Płotka would be Mört, which isn't a GREAT name, admittedly.)

I can kind of see why these stories, testosterone-laden as they are, would have a bunch of annoying fanboys. At the same time I find their "but people CAN'T be black, it's SLAVIC FOLKLORE!" whining even more annoying now. Grimm Brothers aren't Slavic folklore, and without black people we wouldn't have my favourite Cinderella film (dude, the conniptions they'd have over the genetic mix in THAT royal family). Furthermore, Skellige in this version is ridiculously Irish. Like, so Irish I'm surprised it's not populated by leprechauns. Though they also have bagpipes, so maybe Gaelic is a better term. The Elvish language seems to be a mix of Romanic, Germanic and Gaelic languages. (Their name for themselves, Aen Seidhe, is of course related to the Irish aes sidhe, and the Sylvan is Roman.) And of course djinni and ifriti are Middle Eastern (though Aladdin is set in China in some versions). So it's pretty much "put all myths and fairytales in a pot and stir." And that’s fine, but you don’t get to be all “MINE! NO ONE CAN HAS!” about it.

To be fair, I can also see why people who AREN'T annoying assholes would be fans of these books. Especially if they can compartmentalize the sexism, alternatively lived in the 80s when even children's shows had lots of bikini babe extras. There's a lot of rather rowdy fun to be had, and some tenderness.

And yes, I have ordered the second book from the library. (Ebook sadly only available in Finnish. So if you live in Sweden and speak Finnish, you're in luck!)

[medyasabi]

Tan France’s Naturally Tan

There is more to Tan France than a french tuck. 

It was not so long ago when Queer Eye aired on Netflix last February 2018. I’ve loved the show so much that I pledged myself to make my close friends love the show as much as I do. It worked. We love each of the Fab Five unconditionally. 

After watching the first season, I wanted to know more about them. But after the first airing was the peak of their fame. You wouldn’t see a lot of their background on the internet during that time as they have just begun. While they were working on Queer Eye season 2, social media outlets start to introduce Fab 5. I would watch every single video that involves them. Til’ then, the Fab 5 is all over the internet.

While their show is a continuing success, I still continue low-key stalking on these guys. When I came across Tan France’s Wikipedia page, he only had a very brief background about him. There is no way these are the only things he has. I knew this guy has more to tell than being the fashion guy on the show.

There is something with Tan that I’m unsure of. I’m not gonna lie that my wardrobe is partly inspired by him. He mostly wears solid colors and jeans and still be able to look grounded and presentable. I knew that was the kind of style I want to articulate my personality. 

“Clothes were the only way I knew how to articulate myself.” - Tan France, Naturally Tan (2019)

Opening the book, I had expectations of knowing how he started entering the fashion industry before Queer Eye. I expect to know his background up to his peak in Queer Eye. Surprisingly, I got more than I expect to know.

Tan became an open book. He doesn’t only talk about clothes. He talks more than clothes. He labels the chapters to clothing pieces that best represent his story. I had countless jaw drops whenever he starts to share his stories growing up in the UK, his sexuality while being in a Middle-Eastern household, aggressive racism he dealt with over the years and counting, his perception with relationships until he became committed with his husband Rob, and how he discovers himself more through rigid life experiences.  

Naturally Tan stays true to the title. The way he (literally) became an open book shows no sugar coating, which is exactly what he wanted to portray on the show and media. The title states the obvious. His book is legitimately the authenticity you can get from him. Tan carried plenty of insights that must be read by not only Queer Eye fans, but to also youngbloods, clueless adults, and people who aspire to be in the fashion industry who wants to find someone to look up to. 

“It’s amazing how people of colour can be some of the most racist people you’ll come across. It’s not because they fear or hate other people of color; it comes from a place of status and class, and how you don’t want your place to be misrepresented and from subconsciously assuming that white is “better” because there are greater opportunities for white people.”  -Tan France,  Naturally Tan (2019)

I’m one of the type of readers who take decades to finish a book (or never finish it at all), but it took me a week to finish as I couldn’t get enough of him. 

[mixedfeelingsproject]

Anonymous

Where are you from? Australia

How would you describe your race/ethnicity? Sri Lankan/English Australian

Do you identify with one particular aspect of your ethnicity more than another? Have you ever felt pressure to choose between parts of your identity? It's tricky, because I identify more with my Sri Lankan side given that I have closer family connections on that side, more cultural background, and was raised primarily by my parent on that side. However, some people see me as fairly white-passing so there's a pressure there from those people (and even from some members of my extended family on the Sri Lankan side) to identify as white. 

Did your parents encounter any difficulties from being in an interracial relationship? Yes - my white parent's parents were not supportive at first, and there was definitely some conflict there. They also had to deal with people giving my white parent weird looks when he was walking around with 2 brown-looking children, and with people asking my brown parent if they were our nanny. 

How has your mixed background impacted your sense of identity and belonging? I've always felt that I'm both Sri Lankan and white, and belong to both of those groups fully and equally. However, most monoracial people don't tend to see it that way. I've found that most people in each of those groups see me as an outsider, as not belonging to their group - which kind of leaves me feeling like I don't belong anywhere. Also, I have a complicated relationship with my identity in terms of colonialism, as one side of my family (Sri Lankan) is from a colonised country and have been HEAVILY impacted by colonialism in ways that still impact our lives today, but the other side of my family (English) were the colonisers and continue to benefit from colonialism today. So it's very hard to understand and come to terms with where I fit in.

Have you been asked questions like "What are you?" or "Where are you from?" by strangers? If so, how do you typically respond? Yes. So many times, and it's awful. Sometimes it's from acquaintances or service workers trying to make small-talk, sometimes it's from friends. In high school someone in my grade once walked up to me and just bluntly (and loudly) asked 'So what are you?' But the worst thing for me is how often I am asked by doctors/medical workers what my 'country of origin' is. My gut instinct is always to just say 'here' (Australia), because that's the truth. But they're not actually asking what my country of origin is - they're asking about my ethnicity/genetic background. It just really hurts me when people assume because I don't look white, I must be from another country. And it hurts when I answer with my ethnicity (Sri Lankan/English) and they only latch onto one of those components and ignore the other.

Have you experienced people making comments about you based on your appearance? Yes. A lot of people make comments about my appearance - mostly I think in attempt to compliment me, but it often comes off really weird and slightly racist. Eg. a white relative once went on a long spiel about how beautiful my natural skin colour was (like it wasn't too pale, and wasn't too dark), and how I didn't have to tan or anything. I've also had so many comments from white people about my hair. I don't brush it every day, and I don't brush it all the way from root to tip because when I do it becomes uncontrollable and incredibly puffy and difficult to manage.  So normally I just brush the top so it's neat, and leave my natural curls. I get lots of comments about having 'messy' hair, and I often get told to brush my hair or tie my hair up to look presentable.

Have you ever been mistaken for another ethnicity? So many times, and for so many ethnicities as well. No one's ever actually guessed correctly. I've been called Greek, Persian, Middle-Eastern, just plain white, Indian... the list goes on. It's interesting because to some people I'm white-passing, but others don't see any white in me at all (based on appearance). That's why I think being white-passing is a lot more complicated/nuanced than either simply being white-passing or not.

Have you ever felt the need to change your behavior due to how you believe others will perceive you? In what way? Yes. I tend to refrain using Sinhalese/Tamil words and Sri Lankan slang around other Sri Lankan people (extended family and friends) because so often when I do I get strange looks and get made fun of for my accent. But at the same time, I feel like I have to overcompensate when I'm around other Sri Lankan people to 'prove' I'm one of them? Like proving that I can handle spice, proving that I like certain curries etc., proving that I know what different slang terms mean.

What positive benefits have you experienced by being mixed? It's nice to be a part of 2 different cultures and to have values and practices from both of them. I feel like I have broader cultural knowledge than most people for that reason. It's kind of hard to think of positive benefits, to be honest.

Have you changed the way you identify yourself over the years? Yes. I used to call myself a 'halfie' when I was a kid, and self-identified as half-Sri Lankan and half-English. Now, I don't like to refer to myself as 'half' anything. I'm a whole person and I am fully Sri Lankan, fully English, and fully Australian. So now I just call myself 'mixed' or Sri Lankan/English Australian. 

Are you proud to be mixed? Yes

Do you have any other stories you would like to share from your own experiences? I have this example of an awful experience that I think a lot of 'white-passing' people can probably relate to. I was lining up to use a public bathroom, and there was a long queue. Then, a dark-skinned woman with a little kid walked past the line straight towards the bathrooms. The white woman in front of me roughly grabbed this woman by the arm and told her she had to stand in the line. The woman with the kid couldn't understand what she was saying, and was speaking another language. But, the white woman aggressively insisted she go back in the line. I was too shocked to react, and to this day I regret that I didn't say anything or tell the white woman to back off. But the thing that really gets to me is that when the woman with the kid left (I think she took them into the disabled stall), the white woman turned to me, smiled, scoffed, and shook her head. As if this were some kind of inside joke for white people. As if she expected me to respond in kind (ah, damn those silly brown people!). I just glared at her and turned my back. That happened almost 2 years ago and yet I haven't been able to forget it. Being white-passing to some, I definitely have white privilege. But it also means I have to put up with shit like this - with white people making racist comments and jokes and doing racist things around me because they think I'm 'safe' to be racist around. I've since learned to call that stuff out immediately.

[jonelleguevara-blog]

sprouting from the root

Growing up with a negative self-image has led to the unimaginable. I hated what I saw in the mirror. I didn’t always feel this way. As a little girl, I was stress-free and didn’t feel the pressure of having to impress anyone. Society put the thought in my mind that to be normal you had to be a size 2, straight-A student, and most importantly White. Kind of impossible when you’re an overweight Mexican girl. From then on out my mental health continued to get worse. The only way to overcome this negativity was through motivation.

Although family can be a great motivator, it can also be an enormous stressor. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do in the world to give them a better life, considering what they have done for me. Growing up, both my parents came from low-income households with strong independent single mothers. Their fathers were not in the picture, but that never stopped them from doing what’s best for their kids. With the hope of giving us a better life, my father worked hard in school so that he could further his education and get a good job. He didn’t want us to ever worry about whether we had food on the table or a roof over our heads. Even though this motivates me to do better in school, it puts a lot of pressure on me. There is always a piece of me that feels like I am going to disappoint my father.

My brother and sister both have felt this same pressure on them. This has caused their mental health to suffer-especially my brothers. I tried explaining to my parents that they were too hard on us, but they didn’t understand. All my parents would say things like, “Why can’t you just be happy?” or “You don’t know what stress is.” The day my mom finally realized where we were coming from was when I told her that my brother had tried to kill himself. I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. “I don’t know why you and siblings complain about being stressed if you guys have a great life”. That was the day that I realized my mom wasn’t educated about mental health and the effects it has on people. “I know we have a great life; it isn’t even about that. You guys don’t know how much stress we have and how much pressure y’all put on us” “We don’t put pressure on you guys” “Really? Cause last time I checked, it isn’t normal for kids to feel the need to kill themselves”. Tears rolled down our cheeks as we sat in silence. It was uncomfortable but I knew that from now on things were going to be different.

When my mother was 7 months pregnant with me my father received news that his job was moving him to the United States. After being presented with the opportunity, my family hopped on a plane to head to Wilmington, North Carolina. My parents were excited to start their new lives in the “land of opportunities”. Living in Wilmington seemed like a dream with a safe neighborhood, great school district and amazing weather. It wasn’t until I started school that I realized everything was great, except for the people. Going to school was a living nightmare. The kids would look at me differently and judge me because of the color of my skin. I recall this one time a little boy told me I looked like a “Mexican jumping bean” and asked me if I “swam here”. I didn’t think anything of it because I didn't even know what that meant. I sat there confused as the kids laughed at the racist remark. Coming home I told my brother and sister about the incident that happened in class. They told to me that they were just being bullies and not let it get to me. Now that I think back to that moment it upsets me to think that kids that young could be so cruel.

Throughout the years I grew to ignore the things they said to me and accepted that I was never going to be “normal” to them. After all the hate I still found a way to make some friends and even met more Hispanic kids. Although things were getting better, I still felt that I needed to try a little harder than everyone else to fit in. As if it was my fault that kids didn’t like me. I didn’t feel happy, it wasn’t until the day I came home from school and my parents told us that my dad had been hired at a new job and that we would be moving to Sugarland, Texas.

It was exciting to know that I had another chance at making a good impression. I had no prior knowledge of Texas; all I knew was what Sandy Cheeks taught me off of SpongeBob. Because of this, I thought that it was going to be a hot desert and that I would wear cowgirl boots and shorts to school. I was completely wrong. We moved here during the summer, so it was hot, but it wasn't like a desert at all. Houston was big and bright (something I wasn’t used to since I grew up in a small town). Since I moved there in the summer, I didn’t really have much of a chance to make new friends, so I just had to wait it out until I went back to school. Going back to school was nerve-wracking because this would mean I'd have to make friends again and in the past being Mexican didn’t give me much of an advantage. Being Mexican in North Carolina meant being different, and not in a good way.

My first day at Dulles Middle School was nothing like I'd expected. The diversity in that school was ridiculous. Everywhere I looked I saw a different race. Mexicans, African Americans, Asians, Middle Eastern, it was like culture shock. The diversity I saw was overwhelming, and for the first time in my life, I felt as if I could fit in. It wouldn’t have been a proper first day if something embarrassing didn’t happen. Most of the middle schoolers were used to going off a 7-period schedule. I, on the other hand, was still so used to block classes. So, while everyone was in their 6th-period class I was in my 7th-period gym class. As soon as we figured out what class I was supposed to be in my gym teacher sent one of his students to show me where my class was at. Walking out of the gym the girl began to make small talk, “so are you new here?”, “Yeah, I just moved here” I replied. We had an awkward pause. “Well if you want, we can be friends”. Soon enough we were inseparable.

Before school started my mother had to fill out some papers and on one of the papers it asked what my first language is. My mom obviously put Spanish since that is the language I spoke at home. Assuming I only spoke Spanish, the school put me into an ESL class which is a class for students that just started learning English. At first, I didn’t think anything of it; I just assumed I was put in the class because I just moved to Texas. As the class progressed, I began to feel like the class was too easy, so I spoke with the teacher and requested a schedule change. The teacher began to rant to the class about me wanting a schedule change. “If you think that you are SOOO smart then how about you answer these questions”? She proceeded to ask me questions in front of the class and I got every single one right. That same afternoon I was pulled in the counselor’s office to switch me out.

Once they switched me into a regular class, everything fell into place. The girl I had met earlier was in the English class they switched me into, so I began to feel more comfortable. “Hey! Come sit next to me.” I sat quickly before the bell rang. “My name’s Kaylee, by the way.” “I’m Jonelle.” Soon enough we were inseparable. By the end of the year, I began to feel welcomed in a way I never felt back home. As time went by, I made new friends, friends of different races and cultures. The next year I even worked up the courage to try out for the cheer team and as a result, I wound up with more friends than I could even imagine. Life was going great; I was happier than as I’d ever been. As 8th grade came to an end, my family bought a house a little further down in the neighboring town of Missouri City. Sadly, this would mean I'd have to move to a different high school and leave all my new friends behind. I was scared that all the friends I had made in the past two years were just going to forget about me.

To help me transition into high school, my mom thought that it would be a good idea for me to try out for the cheer team. Sadly, I missed tryouts, so she told me that the high school I was going to attend had a dance team and asked me if I wanted to give it a shot. I always had a love for dancing but never actually took classes, so I decided to audition. Most of the girls that were trying out already knew each other from middle school so I stayed to myself throughout the whole process. At the end of the day, they posted the numbers of the girls who had made the team and I was one of them. I was so happy that I was going to start this new chapter in my life and get to know more people.

Once school rolled around, I started feeling that same sense of being left out. Going from an extremely diverse school to a predominantly black school was difficult to adjust to. I always felt like I was too Mexican for the white kids, too white for the black kids and too Americanized for the Mexican kids. It was a vicious loop. As the year went by, I struggled to fit in anywhere but dance. Dance was my way of expressing how I felt. I had just left a school where I had many friends. After moving to my new school, I barely spoke to any of my friends. This had a huge effect on my mental health which caused me to start slacking in my schoolwork. At this point, I didn’t feel happy anywhere, not even in my own home. Come sophomore year I was depressed, and not even dance could help me. I’d come home crying and begging my mom to transfer me back to Dulles but there wasn’t anything she could do. She would tell me to make the most out of it and just focus on my grades and dance.

I was in a dark place, I felt abandoned, not even my best friend was there for me. She would rather hang out with her boyfriend than me. The worst part was that he didn’t want her to hang out with me because he told her I was a “whore”. When she told me what he said I was devastated, I couldn’t believe some guy was calling me such horrific names without even knowing me. His racism was what kept me and Kaylee apart, he didn’t like the fact that I liked black boys or that I went to a predominantly black school. I truly had no one to talk to, not even my family.  

Knowing how my parents were, I was too scared to tell them how I felt in fear of them telling me I’m overreacting and that I have no reason to be depressed because I have food on my plate and a roof above my head. Instead of asking for help I bottled up my emotions and kept it to myself. I spent my days locked up in my room and refused to eat. At this point, I had lost 20 pounds in one month. To people I looked perfectly fine and happy but, on the inside, I was just rotting away. I hated the way I looked, the way I acted, I hated myself.

As junior year was approaching my grades went from C’s to A’s. The motivation I once had was starting to come back but even stronger than before. I reconnected with my friends Allie and Skyler and I began to make more friends because of them. Dance also helped me find my crowd. It wasn’t just a distraction at this point, dancing was fun and because of that, my team became like another family. The most influential person I met on the team was Ashlyn Sydney Gipson. She reminded me of the importance of self-worth and taught me to never let anybody walk over me. A sisterhood bond formed over the love of dance.

Although my social life was getting better, I still felt kind of lost. Mixed emotions filled my head daily. Was I happy? Was I sad? At that point, I had no clue. My initial thought was that my hormones were out of whack, so I just ignored it and went on about my year. The sound of the bell on the last day of school was like angels singing. That bell meant that as of that moment we were seniors and that summer was going to be the best one yet. I was finally happy and had lots of plans with my friends.

Throughout the summer I spent almost every day at the pool, I mean I was a lifeguard but even when I was off of work. If I wasn’t at the pool, then I was at Allie and Skyler’s house working on a tan or going on late night adventures. Even towards the end of the summer I still felt excited because that meant that this was going to be my last year of high school. The excitement of college was the only thing on my mind. My first week of senior year was a blast.

Towards the end of November, things started to feel rushed. I was so caught up on having fun that I forget that I had to take my SAT. Not only was I behind academically but I started to realize that I didn’t know what I was going to do in life. Somehow, I thought that the second I graduated I was going to be handed a slip telling me what I was supposed to become. I got accepted into Texas State and already had a roommate, but it still didn’t feel right. Was my happiness temporary? Why did I feel like a baby bird being pushed out of its nest with no clue that I had to fly? This wasn’t how I wanted things to go. I was supposed to graduate high school and have my career planned out so that I could make my father proud.

My whole life I was told that happiness was shown with a smile. What if underneath that smile was an unhappy person? No one told me that for one to truly be happy they had to be happy with themselves. This whole time I was letting what people said or thought about me affect my mental health. The key to my happiness.

[ A lot of things went through my mind while writing this memoir. When I first started the outline I wasn't being completely honest with myself. After doing some research I knew that for it to be a real memoir I had to be truthful. The outcome wasn't exactly what I expected but I think it came out alright. In the future, I could possibly see myself furthering this memoir, maybe even post more of my writing. ]

[atheistforhumanity]

Racism in response to racism?

We need to have a talk about racism and this time it’s not about white people. And let me head off any nonsense statements about non-white people being incapable of being racist. If you think that, then you are claiming one race to be naturally inferior and therefore are being racist. It’s a claim that proves it’s counter, so don’t waste my time.

Let me start by telling you what happened to my friend yesterday. Recently at my alma mater and home town, it came to light that one student posted on their snap chat that she was “lynching niggers tonight.” Naturally, the student body erupted into protests, which is a good thing. I would have protested as well had I still been there. But this post isn’t about that event it is the lead in.

My friend, who is a community organizer and activist, went up to protest. She’s white. She wore her med-vest because she has emt training. Immediately upon arriving she was harassed, shoved down to the ground, yelled at, threatened. All she did was show up to protest and she was instantly targeted at the enemy because of her skin color. It makes no sense that while protesting racism you would look at someone and instantly count them as the enemy based on their skin color. This is wrong and it is racism. Not only did they shove her repeatedly, but they shoved her elderly friend, who walks with a cane, down to the ground too. She came to participate as well because she’s also a community activist. Young college students knocking down any white person they see is not protesting, it’s giving in to the same irrational hate they claim to be fighting.

The crux of my post here is that other people’s wrongs do not excuse your own.

But it’s not just about this incident. The problem is much bigger and never talked about, because it is shut down under the argument that it’s not as important. True, systemic racism done by white people in America is the definitive problem of our country and it clearly does far more harm than other types of prejudice. That does not mean that other types do not exist or that they are justified.

As someone who spent all of my youth getting jumped by red necks, fighting with my own family and community over racism, and being harassed during interracial relationships, there’s nothing I hate more than when someone of color automatically assumes me to be the enemy.

Right now our country is in a place where people of color are able to treat white people white people with prejudice and it’s supposed to be ignored because it’s not as damaging. Well we don’t say that grabbing a strangers ass is okay because it’s not as bad rape. We recognize it’s the under the same umbrella of behavior and we call it out. Such as...

The use of Whiteboy: The use of boy instead of man has a clear and obvious purpose being a throwback to when slave owners called black men “boy.” Adding white to it is an act of separation to say you are not like me and you are not as good. Hence the common ignorant statement, “pretty good for a whiteboy.” This is a double standard as it is not acceptable to call a non-white person by their race or as boy. Double standards are not equality, they are payback. Payback is not justice.

The acceptance of talking about all white people: If you are complaining of racism and at the same time attacking all white people then you are committing the wrong done against you. Generalization and stereotyping is what prejudice is made of. It cannot be wrong only for white people to do, it’s also wrong to do to white people.

Something else that was yelled at my friend yesterday was to “go home” because it’s not her fight. This is something else that angers me. It’s not just your side, it’s the right side, and I don’t need anyone’s fucking permission to be on it. Morality is not a cool club that you get to create membership for. White people have every right to be involved in the fight against racism and every reason to be just as invested.

Let me highlight the madness of shunning white people from fighting against racism along side you. It is commonly accepted among liberals that America’s policies and it’s bigotry turns people into the arms of extremists groups, particularly confused young men who feel rejected and hated.

Now imagine your a white person who shows up to an event saying, “hey, I’m against racism too. I wanna show my support and fight.” And instead being welcomed you get...

“Fuck you, you racist piece of shit. Leave or I’ll hurt you.”

If that kind of behavior were to become the norm, how long would it take to drive people to the other side. No, joining extremist groups or racism is still wrong despite of how other’s treated you, but we recognize it as a factor with young middle eastern kids.

To wrap up this post, my point is very simply that racism from non-white people is a part of our culture as well and it needs to be talked about. It doesn’t need to be more important or worse than white systemic racism, it exists and it’s still racism. We all have to ask ourselves, are we committed to stamping out ALL racism? Will you, a Hispanic person, call out your friends who make remarks about the Chinese? Will you, a black person, call out your friends generalization of white people? Will you, a black American, call out your other black friends inappropriate remarks about the African student? And so on and so on?

Here are some of my previous writings on racism:

Just Come Here Legally 

Part of A Pattern 

The government will turn a blind eye to white supremacy groups. 

Breitbart Attacks Superman for Saving immigrants 

Conservatives, Confederacy, and Education 

Which Party is Racist? 

You’re White, Why Are You Offended? 

[roscoerackham]

On the Faction Conflict - an Incoherent 2 AM Thesis

So there’s a lot of talk about what the thematic division between the Alliance and the Horde is. 

Pretty Races vs Ugly Races? Well, that’s not right, because the Horde has Blood Elves (and now Nightborne) and the Alliance has Worgen.

Good Races vs Evil Races? That’s not true either, because there are examples of goodness and evil on both sides. Or at least, there are supposed to be.

No, there’s something older and deeper here, and it’s something I came across while I was working on my thesis...

When J.R.R. Tolkien was writing Lord of the Rings, there was a large focus on corruption. Most of the villains of Middle-earth are individuals who were corrupted by evil; Sauron is a fallen divine being, his ring is a tool that mentally and physically corrupts his victims, the orcs are (depending on the source) either a mockery of elves or literally corrupted elves. Various characters are tempted and corrupted by evil power, and turn monstrous in the process.

The biggest fear in LoTR was being corrupted by power and becoming a monster; something Tolkien saw happen (metaphorically) many times during the war.

But Tolkien’s work was written so that many different interpretations could be applied to it; a concept he called applicability. 

And, unfortunately, one of those interpretations was really fucking racist guys.

There’s a concept that arose in the wake of Darwin called degeneration theory. The idea was that humanity, rather than constantly improving ad infinitum, would experience a decline; becoming morally, mentally, and physically inferior until it went extinct. Over time, this theory became intermingled with ideas on race, gender, and sexuality. This theory has been used to promote genocide, eugenics, and all sorts of other nasty things.

But it’s also been used to influence some of the most famous literary works of all time, like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Grey. In these works, physical degeneration accompanies moral degeneration. Mr. Hyde is monstrous looking and evil because he’s Dr. Jekyll’s degenerate evil side. Dorian Grey’s portrait becomes more monstrous as he grows more monstrous. 

And naturally, Tolkien (being quite possibly the most well read fantasy author in history) was influenced by this as well. 

But here’s the thing; no one really argues that Dorian Grey is racist, even though it draws inspiration from this degeneration theory. That’s because Dorian Grey or Dr. Jekyll don’t deal with race. They’re about the degeneration of a singular (white) person. 

But Lord of the Rings is all about race. It’s an attempt at reconstructing a lost fairy tale mythology featuring creatures like Elves and Dwarves and Goblins, which draws its dynamic from their interactions. It features races because the source material does, and it has evil goblins because the source material does. Those Goblins would eventually become orcs, but that’s where it all comes from. Some scholars even argue that it’s an error to even read Tolkien orcs as mortal beings, because the etymology of their name (meaning ‘evil spirit’, roughly) and their connection to Sauron and Melkor (Lucifier-esque fallen angel figures) mark them as being more analogous to demons.

But Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings to be applicable to many viewpoints, and people started drawing comparisons... eventually, the orcs were read as a monstrous racial other. Mortal beings whose evil was the result of degeneration; and who were subhuman because of this fact. Worse, the other races of Middle-earth were also subject to this degeneration; capable of becoming Gollum-esque monsters if they fell to the whims of evil. 

Whatever Tolkien actually meant, people started assuming that the Orcs were an allegory for black people. Or for whatever ethnic group they didn’t like. And that idea stuck around; Stormfront, the biggest white supremacist forum on the internet, has a dedicated Lord of the Rings forum. 

It’s an idea that’s been polluting popular fantasy for decades now, which brings me back to WoW, because this concept of corruption and degeneration is at the heart of the faction conflict.

Let’s look at the racial spreads as of Battle for Azeroth.

Alliance: Humans, Gnomes, Dwarves, Night Elves, Draenei, Worgen, Dark Iron Dwarves, Lightforged Draenei, Void Elves.

Horde: Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Undead, Blood Elves, Goblins, Nightborne, Zandalari Trolls, Highmountain Tauren. 

Neutral: Pandaren

The majority of the Alliance Races are individuals who have resisted or escaped corruption; Stormwind Humans are one of the last bastions of civilization on the Eastern Kingdoms, the Night Elves refused magic after the War of the Ancients, the Draenei are literally Eredar who said “no thanks” to the Legion. Their whole story tends to revolve around the classic World Threat narrative so common in fantasy; the last bastions of light in a world being consumed by darkness. Even their corrupted races, like Worgen and Void Elves, are marked by their resistance to the forces that corrupted them (and in the case of the Worgen, the corruption of undeath as well).

The Horde, meanwhile, is full of races that have been corrupted; Orcs and Undead are the most obvious, but also Blood Elves and Nightborne. And unlike the Alliance, every single one of these races fell to their corruption at some point, only to pull themselves back up and rebuilt. 

And that’s where the problem is, because (perhaps unconsciously) the game is falling back on this racist idea of degeneration.

The Horde Races were either monstrous/traditionally evil to begin with, or degenerated into a fallen state before being redeemed. The Alliance Races are either traditionally good, or were not allowed to degenerate in the first place (and both Worgen and Void Elves can also hide their monstrous nature). 

And this creates this... really uncomfortable aura of racial purity around the Alliance when you examine it like this, which stuff like Tyrande’s attitude toward the Nightborne kind of exacerbates. Some races just aren’t good enough to begin with: ones that (in other popular fantasy) would be considered degenerate based on appearance alone. Others are actually corrupted by fel magic or addiction, in a way which wasn’t treated by a member of the Alliance, or that isn’t easily concealed, or that goes against faction ideologies. 

And I don’t think that should be the metric by which the factions are measured, but there’s not really anything else. There’s no philosophical divide or anything. It’s 100% racial. Even Wildstar, which was problematic as fuck sometimes, had a philosophical difference between the two factions. 

I worry that the “Horde commits a war crime” trend in Cata, MOP, and now BFA is due in part to the fact that if the Alliance were ever the unambiguous aggressor, the fact that the faction is built on this unintentional foundation of racial purity would be made immediately obvious. 

Garrosh dropping an unprovoked mana bomb on Theramore is Garrosh being an evil warmonger. Varian dropping an unprovoked mana bomb on a peaceful Orc settlement would unquestionably be a race thing. 

And I don’t want that, because that’s terrible fucking writing. 

So many people say the faction conflict feels ‘pointless’, and I think this is why. It’s a conflict that relies on these antiquated ideas to generate stories, rather than giving the factions any real stance or motivation. I’m hoping Battle for Azeroth fixes this, but honestly I doubt it.

Ah well...

[sofard]

"I’m not a racist, but...”

A friend of mine once used a fake name on a job application. He had the kind of pedigree that would have all but guaranteed him at least an interview were it his name was of the fairer skinned variety but as it were, he was deep in a several-months-long streak of rejected applications and the skin suit he was blessed with at birth was of the Indian persuasion.

Evidently what inspired his decision to lie about his name was a study published around that time that showed that people with traditionally “black” names were a third less likely to be called back for an interview than those with “white” names and he figured what might be true of the Daquans and Tyrones of the world might be true of the Daneshes and Tanvirs. 

In what proved to be a fortuitous state of affairs for him and a sad state of affairs for humanity, he was right. He landed the interview (and the job) and apparently explaining to your would-be boss that your name is actually Navin Modi and not Nathan Madison is indeed as awkward as one would expect. Upon receiving word of Navin's deceit, his boss was predictably upset but also afraid of the HR nightmare that might ensue should he raise an uproar, and Navin, for his part, was left with the kind of morose self righteousness one feels when our worst suspicions are vindicated. 

This story is worth sharing because it bears on the pernicious subtlety of contemporary racism. Racism with a capital R still exists, but we have mostly silenced it. The tragedy of today is that even in the upper echelons of progressive, liberal, socially-conscious society, there remains the kind of racial biases we assume we have shed. And because calling someone a racist has become more taboo than actually being racist, accusations of “race based decision making,” to put it kindly, are welcomed with a kind of awkward denial the likes of which you might expect if you publicly point out someone’s hair plugs. 

I think the shaming of racism speaks to why there is so much silent disagreement over its prevelance. Political correctness has done too great of a job of shutting out explicit bigotry in the public sphere, and so pointing out its more complicated or subdued manifestations can make you sound like a conspiracy theorist at times. 

We are wired to notice change and ignore the consistent. It is why we miss partners most when they are gone. And because lynchings and residential schools are a thing of the past, we are left bickering over things like whether or not police brutality is indeed discriminatory, each side cherrypicking favourable details from academic papers and criticizing study flaws to make their point.  

There is a scene in Django Unchained where Leonardo Dicaprio’s character, Candie Calvin, owner of Candie-land, a prosperous plantation, threatens to murder his slave (the protagonist’s love interest), Broomhilda, by bludgeoning her with a hammer, unless his unwelcome guests pay him twelve thousand dollars. Regardless of your opinion of the civil war or race politics today, I imagine any viewer, save perhaps psychopaths, was reeling in empathy watching that scene. Even the most bigoted amongst us will find it easy to condemn the racial-slurs-screaming antagonists portrayed in films; those characters who are portrayed with an ugliness on the outside to suit the ugliness inside. 

Candie Calvin threatening to murder his property, Broomhilda.

These kind of extremes, in film or history books, serve as a sort of healing stone, placating our conscience and forgiving us of the kind of daily prejudices that go unnoticed. This is why it is possible for some to simultaneously hate german nazis from World War II and sympathize with modern white nationals who extol similar rhetoric under the guise of preserving history or cultural identity. 

In this way, art and media pacify our conscience. I am not yelling chink at every Chinese person I see crossing the street and so I am better than the worst portrayed in film, I am conditioned to believe. This is what our understanding of racism today looks like, if you can call it that. The very word evokes such a garish or violent extreme of bigotry that we become blinded to its more detrimental and subtle varieties the way staring into headlights blinds you to the muted glow of the stars. 

People like resolutions. The tearing down of the Berlin wall was a great symbolic end to the cold war. The images of young men and women, sledge hammers in hand, swinging at the graffitied wall bear some kind of cathartic victory over a darker past. There is no physical wall separating races, no monument celebrating racism (though if there were I would be the first person to volunteer its design) we can tear down and so instead we erect one-dimensional symbols of intolerance and make peace with our history by defeating them. 

I once had a conversation about race with a white friend of mine who said sincerely “I wish I took advantage of white privilege” as though it is government-issued token you can cash in opportunistically. “Sorry, I am seeing someone” — “Wait, I have 3 white privilege vouchers” — “Why didn’t you say so? Where should we fuck?" 

There are endless statistics to measure at least the empirical manifestations of racism. White people are less likely to be arrested for the same crime as minorities, more favoured romantically than any other race on dating sites, more likely to be hired with the same resume, more likely to be cast in film roles, more likely to be acquitted for a crime, more likely to be given a loan — the list goes on and on. 

We call this kind of stuff systemic racism. I believe we do so in part because it helps absolve any particular individual from prejudice. It’s more comforting to know that institutions and socioeconomic classes are responsible for prejudice than we are as complicit, voting, individuals. Racism, and other isms, in this way, have evolved from a choice of an individual to a phenomenon as natural as hurricane winds; something to be studied and measured and explained through psychological and socioeconomic theory. 

How privileged a race is on the spectrum of societal tolerance can be measured by the extent to which their improprieties are afforded context. A white woman who murders her cheating husband is understood to be blinded by temporary insanity or moment of passion. We might punish her out of civil duty, but deep down we extend some empathy to the heart stricken widow. Films will be made and books written attempting to explain what compelled an otherwise lovely woman to commit a crime of passion. Psychologists will be interviewed to assess how, perhaps, her father’s frequent trips overseas and the condom she once found in his travel bag plagued her with a mistrust of men throughout adulthood and how that combined with an abusive boyfriend in her past all but guaranteed destiny would bring her to this horrible act. 

Stereotypes are a burden carried by minorities and individuality a luxury afforded to the light skinned. When I go to a restaurant, I make sure to give a nice tip even if the service is terrible. I feel that in social settings I am an ambassador for Middle Eastern people the world over, like I am carrying a lanyard with the words “Iranian Male Corp. Name: Saeid Fard. Ask me about how non threatening I am.” One act of rudeness or impropriety might be generalized to my entire community, I fear, and conversely all the stereotypes of middle eastern men, the chauvinism, homophobia, or proclivity to douse ourselves in a shroud of cologne, are assumptions I have to actively invalidate. 

I recall one corporate training session years ago when conversation of diversity in the workplace came up and the lead administrator, the kind of person who gets off on being offended, asked the group to raise their hands if they have a gay friend. One of my closest friends at the time was gay (which I hate to bring up because invoking friendship with a minority is the go to defence of any bigot), but I declined to raise my hand on grounds of how ugly I found the question to be. I wondered if he would feel as comfortable asking the group if they have a black friend. Did not raising one’s hand imply that one is necessarily homophobic? Needless to say, I was the only one with my hand down. I was hoping this would spark some kind of dialog where I could make the point of how I found his very question insulting and unproductive. Instead he made eye contact with me, lectured us briefly with platitudes about the importance of diverse perspectives, and moved on. That was it. It was a homophobes-anonymous roll call and apparently I was the only member. Perhaps it was my own insecurity, but I imagined him looking up my name on a clipboard later with the words “hates gay people” next to it and a box labeled “verified” which he gleefully checked.

I have spoken to many members of visible minority groups who feel the same way — feel that they must proactively fight against the assumptions made of them. Even “positive” stereotypes are destructive in that they strip us of complexity. Blacks as athletic or asians good at math, are the kinds of expectations that strip  people of the freedom to self actualize. Slavoj Zizek touches on this point in his talk of political correctness and racial cliches. In one binary cultural narrative of the west, natives are cast as stewards of nature living in harmony with the environment, while the white colonialists on the other hand conquered their environment and are now dealing with a rapprochement of sorts. The truth is, of course, more complex. Natives, for instance, employed what would be considered today barbaric hunting practices that brought the buffalo population of North America to near extinction. Giving people the benefit of being fully human requires giving them the dignity to be horrible. 

Modern day racism is the stripping of individuality and complexity. We spend more effort trying to understand why people of European descent do things and yet generalize the behaviours of coloured people to inherent flaws (or virtues) of their race. A white serial killer is a case study in human psychopathy. A brown one is a terrorist. A white drug user is self medicating, or exploring their identity or navigating societal norms. A black drug user is a thug. It’s worth noting now that there is also an undeniable element of social and economic class at play but describing our penchant to strip minorities of individuality cannot only be deconstructed by race. 

When I was in seventh grade I had the misfortune of being granted the nickname Saudi Arabia from my class of mostly east Asian and White children. Kids will be kids and most of them will tease and be teased, but it’s not if but how you are teased during your formative years that defines what talismanic insecurities you will exercise into adulthood. Already different from every student, I became acutely aware of how physically different I was from my peers at the time. Darker, hairier, wide-nosed, the list goes on. Insults and defamations aside, words have a way of mirroring your identity, a literary conduit into the perceptions of others. I was brown (or olive or whatever) and that brownness or oliveness or whatever really seemed to mean something to people. 

Two paths emerge when people are persistently reminded of their differentness from such a young age, they either let that differentness empower them or swallow them whole. We carry our adolescent identities and insecurities to our grave. And it is through those formative experiences and labels that we develop the racial pride and resentments that bias the decision making of even the best of us. 

Our present inability to rid ourselves of this whole messy racism thing is in part due to the fact that we have been trained to care about race in the first place. The moment you devise an arbitrary way to separate people, whether it be race, national boundaries, or gender, the pernicious “ism” won’t be too far behind. Make too much of a fuss about the sexes (as we have for centuries) and sexism will brew and, like a parasite, snake its way into the most fundamental assumptions we make about each other. We have collectively decided that talking of the “positive” elements of our race is permissable but talking of the “negative” is not. The problem is they are two sides of the same coin. The instant you allow a place for value judgments, there will be both good and bad judgments. 

I don’t believe we can ever truly rid the world of racism, but we can make progress to reduce it. And that starts with the inconvenient step of thinking twice when we celebrate our particular race or culture. That is hard, and perhaps controversial, because many would argue that celebrating our race, particularly as minorities, is a step towards empowerment. And that’s true, but empowerment perpetuates the very acknowledgement of race that can stifle progress. 

Our tendency is to cling to identity myths to help give our lives meaning. Race serves as a kind of semi-exclusive club we are born into. Some clubs have better member benefits than others, but better to be a part of a club than a pariah. 

We are tribal, after all. Study after study has shown that when you give groups of children or adults an arbitrary identity, like making some of them team blue and others team red, they will eventually begin to drape themselves in that identity and build real favouritism for their own and resentment for others. We are literally hard wired for it. 

I dream of a day where we have successfully interbred to the point where the human genetic soup becomes some kind of mono race. Then, we can hate each other for entirely novel reasons.

[qqueenofhades]

bruh those are the ancestors to white people in europe anyway, it really doesn't change a damn thing to the whites lmao

Hi there. I’m guessing this is about my post from a couple days ago, about the ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge? That has unexpectedly gotten pretty popular, which is cool. I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at here, tbh, but I’m guessing that you mean it doesn’t matter if the people/culture of prehistoric/BC Europe was multi-coloured/multi-racial/nonwhite, because the white supremacists still won’t care or notice or change their beliefs about Europe Being White ™ to start with. And to some degree, you’re right. People who are absolutely convinced that Europe was always white are not going to change their minds because of one article on the internet. I’m not even going to try. But also, there’s still value to be had in knowing this, circulating it, and pointing it out.

First of all, Stonehenge (as I noted in the post) is a famous symbol of “Englishness” or “British culture” and so forth, one of the most visited monuments in England, and every year, it’s a major gathering place for nu-pagan and druidic and New Age rituals and so forth. There are elements of that culture which are right-wing and white supremacist and neo-Nazi, and discovering that Stonehenge was in fact built by the descendants of people who came to England as Mediterranean and Middle Eastern migrants is… fitting, even if it won’t be acknowledged by said white supremacists. But the thing is, as Sirius Black would say, the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. There are plenty of people who aren’t active white supremacists, who aren’t even necessarily right-wing – ordinary mainstream, non-evil, next-door-neighbor kinds of people, whose basic and underlying belief is that Europe is/was historically white, that people of colour “don’t have a history” or have never made lasting contributions to civilisation, so on and so forth. This is obviously nonsense. But the level of historical education is so low that it is passed on, especially in Western school systems and their attendant racial and imperial roots, as received wisdom. Making information that contradicts that belief available is not going to solve that problem by itself. But (as is noted on my blog) I’m a historian. This is the kind of thing I do.

Next, there’s the case of Derek Black, the son of the founder of Stormfront and godson of David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK. He was the heir of the entire modern American white nationalism movement, and was prepared to succeed as its leadership. Then he went to college, started studying medieval history in order to support said white nationalism, and he… couldn’t find anything he had been taught, about what was supposedly present to justify a historically white Europe. Derek eventually fully renounced his family’s hateful belief system and became a left-wing activist (and is a PhD student working on medieval Islam). You can read more about that entire saga. What it came down to was that even the most indoctrinated white supremacist was able to encounter information that challenged and eventually deconstructed his beliefs, and while that is not going to happen with everyone, the need for historical education remains central. It might be tempting to just throw up our hands and figure there’s nothing anyone can do, and as I said, I am not expecting that to happen in all or even most cases. But the narrative has to be established. We have to make the information available and to engage in this kind of work anyway. Derek Black’s father complained that he was exposed to so much “multiculturalism” at his liberal college that he finally “succumbed.” Medievalists have recently engaged in all kinds of wrestling with our social and moral responsibilities and the fact that the discipline has in fact often been used to produce similar white-supremacist narratives. And we still have a lot of work to do, trust me.

There’s also what I call the “misogyny crutch” in well-meant liberal media, TV, and film (especially historically themed ones). How many times have we seen a character quickly and lazily coded evil because they mistreat women and/or are racist? This isn’t in dispute; we know these things are bad. But it also means that if we’re allowed to think that sexism and racism and misogyny and homophobia and so forth only exist in obvious and irredeemable villains, we are spared the need to wonder if it exists in ourselves. In that same vein, most people, and even most white people, aren’t Nazis. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t hold the same kind of inherently or passively racist beliefs. So if they look at my dashed-off Tumblr post and see the faces of Whitehawk Woman and Cheddar Man, the ancient Britons who are decidedly not white, maybe they notice that, and it makes them think. It is not going to Fix All Racism, but hey. It’s there.

Basically, there is never a bad or wrong time to destroy “Europe Was Always White!!!” It needs to be demonstrated as a lie often and loudly, especially by people (such as me) who are white themselves. People of colour should not be the only ones who have to say it. We should never assume that it’s obvious or that it’s unimportant or that it can just be assumed. We have to talk about race, especially in terms of a political and social environment that is re-weaponizing white supremacy and translating that to the government of Western countries (as it has for most of post-Columbus history). So no, maybe it doesn’t change a damn thing. But at least we will have started the conversation and not let toxic lies pass unchallenged. And that, if nothing else, is all we can do.

So yes.

[evilwickedme]

Jews in Modern Media: A Discussion - Repost

Aight so this is a really old post I made in like? 2015? on a blog that is now private, and I recently was asked to repost it so a few notes:

A. Don’t take everything here in face value. It’s a bit more complicated than this. It’s still pretty accurate as an overview, but do your own research, if it’s a topic that interests you.

B. A lot of issues that should be explored in this post aren’t, and that includes: Jewish poc, in general the fact that Jewish people don’t fit in to the poc/white people dynamic, and the whole Jewish actors not playing outright Jewish characters and the other way around. Also, Jewish coding isn’t outright mentioned. In general, as I said, it’s a very general overview.

C. There isn’t any mention of Fantastic Beasts or Wonder Woman and I beg of you, please keep it this way.

D. I also edited it, so if you’ve seen this post before, there’s no new content, but hopefully it’s a little more coherent and accessible to gentiles.

Alright?

This all started when a friend complained to me about the representation of Jews in American media. He linked me to an Idea Channel video and said:

…every minority is getting their time in the spotlight, but Jews are still off to the side. It’s like the world is saying “The world is diverse! But Jews are still all white and assimilated” or only defined by the Holocaust (i.e. Magneto) and/or by Israel. But that’s totally untrue! If Ms. Marvel is awesome for being the first Muslim character to headline a comic (which she is), why not so with an openly Jewish Jew?

He complained to me that a lot of what’s discussed in the video hasn’t been applied to Jews yet, saying: “I want Menorah Man! (Actually I don’t, cause that would suck.) But you know what I mean!” and that all you could see were Jews who were “Very Borscht Belty or Super Charedi.”

I did know what he meant. The very idea of Menorah Man sucks because it stills pigeonholes Jews. We’re defined only by the most Christian holiday (more on that below). But that would still be infinitely better than the situation we have currently: Jews who aren’t actually allowed to be Jewish.

Let’s start with the actual portrayal of Jews in media. At the time I couldn’t remember a single non Ashkenazi Jew. I’m sure that I heard of a case but I couldn’t actually remember what it was. He was right about the two extremes, except that there’s one clear preference for one side (which would be non-Jewish Jews). Charedi are almost never main characters (I remember one movie with Jessie Eisenberg, but that’s it). The truth is, in American media, Jews aren’t supposed to be religious.

I’d actually talked about this all in a really old thread on a shared facebook group, where this same friend had asked:

 How do you guys feel about the portrayal of Jewish Characters (especially religious Jews) in media? I also find it interesting that being openly Christian or Muslim in media is becoming more favorable, and those types of characters are becoming more complex, while Jews are still stuck in stereotypes, for the most part. Thoughts?

My answer:

“Oh man, you’re talking to the right girl here. I’m going to focus on television because that’s my expertise but most of these are transferable to all kinds of plot driven media. Ok. So. Here’s the thing: television as a whole doesn’t know what to DO with Jews. There’s a trope called You Have to Have Jews -the basics of which are that everything has to have Jews because there are so many Jews in Hollywood. However, most prominent Jews in Hollywood are only allowed to be Jews in so far as the comedy aspect of it - you know what I mean. The Big Bang Theory is an excellent popular example of it. Crooked nose, Brooklyn accent, overbearing, fat mothers who are all, somehow, Ashkenazi. The reason for this is actually partly our own fault - as a method of survival, Jews have taken self depreciating humor to a whole new level, which has simply caught on. You know the rule of the n word - only black people are allowed to call themselves that? In Hollywood, that separation simply never happened. That rule was never set in place, because the Jews had been making fun of themselves for so long, and then when the white people came along they thought “we can too”. And once a race becomes a joke in Hollywood, it stays a joke. And the thing is unlike with LGBTQA and Black/Asian/Latinx communities, there is simply no awareness of the problem. Antisemitism stops plenty of people from listening to the few who try to change things. I have seen very few convincing Jews on television. Mostly, Judaism is treated in the “You’ve Got To Have Jews” throwaway line sense. For example, Willow Rosenberg. Her name sounds Jewish, she mentions she’s Jewish once or twice in the second season, and she puts a rock on a grave. In seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (more, if you count the comics, and I do) that is every reference to her Jew-ness, and I just did a rewatch. Anyway, what I meant with not knowing what to DO with Jews is more complicated than that. Basically, despite the abundance of Jews in Hollywood, the antisemitism pushes any of them who are actually practicing to never admit it. This means that Jews never do anything, well, Jewish. (I can think of very few instances where Jewish customs are shown and they all link to either funerals or Hannukah, which are, apparently, the only holidays Jews celebrate, ever.) This means that Jews in television generally a. celebrate Christmas, b. adhere to some stereotype or another, and/or c. have no Jewish identity besides parentage. Most of the time they’ll have typically Jewish names (but not always!). I know for a fact that there ARE practicing Jews in Hollywood - and yet, no Jewish character is ever seen in Synagogue or wearing a Kippah. Appearances of main characters as Jews that fit in to this are: The aforementioned Willow Rosenberg from Buffy, Howard Wollowtz from the Big Bang Theory, Zoe Hart (who is said to be half Jewish and yet manages to fit in to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE CRITERIA) from Hart of Dixie, Felicity Smoak from Arrow, Annie Edison from Community, Rachel Berry from Glee. Jewish characters who appear in one episode and whose jobs are to Be Jewish are excluded from this, as are Ultra Urthodox. But I’ve only seen the first once and the second twice. As for why there are only Ashkenazi Jews, it’s because there are only Ashkenazi Jews. It’s actually very much circular.”

(Note from present me: here I could’ve easily discussed Jewish-coding, but since this is already long enough, another time.)

The wide variety of Jews that exist in Real Life aren’t portrayed on TV. And while those variety of other minorities are coming out slowly, Jews are lagging behind. Jews are allowed to be Jewish either as long as they eat pork or as long as they have no contact with other, non Jewish people.

The friend responded, saying that was the problem in the first place: there’s no middle ground. No Sephardi Jews, no Modern Orthodox. He blamed it on the “Jewish Media Conspiracy”, but I said it’s a little more complicated than that.

I then gave a little historical background. I assumed that my friend knew that Hollywood was built by Ashkenazi Jews, but I asked him if he knows why.

See, back then there were tons and tons of Ashkenazi Jews coming in from all over Europe. A lot of them were coming to Israel in waves called the Aliyot but most of the Jews leaving Europe were heading towards the INCREDIBLY RACIST US of A. So, once again finding themselves in a country where they had no place that wanted them, Jews headed towards the as of yet incredibly undeveloped Hollywood and LA and built it. They took an unfilled niche and made it their own, mostly because they couldn’t do much of anything else.

My friend compared it to money lending, which was a very, very good comparison. For those of you who don’t know what the whole money lending issue is: in old Europe Jews were pigeon-holed into money lending because Christians weren’t allowed to do it. Jews pretty much weren’t allowed to do anything else vis a vis earning a living, and eventually money-lender and Jew became synonymous. That is the source of the common stereotype of Jews being greedy: because of something they couldn’t help in the first place.

The fact that they created Hollywood, of course, is the source of  both You’ve gotta have Jews and the idea that Jews Control the Media (well, at least in its American form - the idea already existed in many ways). Now, most of these Jews weren’t religious, often because they viewed religion as the thing that was killing them by the millions in Europe. This was before the Holocaust, just to be clear - what we’re talking about is a reaction to the Eastern European Pogroms and the rise of a new type of racial Antisemitism in the west, which at the time seemed to be about religion. Of course the new Antisemitism is more complicated, and so are the reasons they distanced themselves from religion, but still. So the Jews who were building the foundations of Hollywood did the two things they did best: Made good movies, and made fun of Jews. There’s a long tradition of Jews making fun of themselves, as a coping mechanism. But! Suddenly all of these vaguely Christian white men realized that OMG, Hollywood is becoming a thing. And when they took control, Jews were still being made fun of, but now, instead of being in on the joke, they were made the butt of the joke. Stereotypes, which had at first been introduced by Jews as a sort of “in joke”, were made to be and portrayed as the rule. So Hollywood continued of course, and you probably know much of the next part of the story: the civil rights movement and second wave feminism in the sixties and early seventies changing the amount of women and black people seen on TV and to a certain extent on the big screen. Again, in the late eighties/early nineties, with the beginning of third wave feminism, more (mostly white, probably all cis-het) women on TV and movies alike, slowly many more black people and slowly, other minorities such as asians and hispanics. But during this entire time, JEWS WERE STILL BEING THE BUTT OF JOKES. There has never been a time in which there weren’t Jews in popular media and THIS, THIS, is the root of the problem. Antisemitic jokes are so ingrained into popular culture that they’re literally older than sliced bread. Jews weren’t ever slowly introduced to popular culture, and so there doesn’t seem to be anything to fix.

But of course, he said, there is something to fix.

And there is.

“Me: As for specifically that video, except for the problem that he mentioned pretty much every minority but Judaism, it’s not his fault.

Friend: Because of all of what you just mentioned.

Me: Yep. I should also say that anytime any voice speaks out against antisemitism they are often shot down with the same “Jews control the media” arguments, which is why so few people speak out, which is why the same arguments can be recycled.”

[amarynceus]

Political Blitherings, et c.

Preface 0.1.  Politics, race issues, anger.  Part venting, part thinking. Below the cut.

Questions? Responses?  Acknowledge my right to exist and equal treatment, and I’ll debate almost anything.  There’s an ask button, use it.  Fail to acknowledge that basic point and we are done, full stop.

Preface: NDN = decendant of indigenous peoples of the continents located between Western and Eastern Eurasia, in case you didn’t know.

Second preface; I hope even if you don’t agree with me on very many things, so long as you agree on my basic premiss, that you will read this through if you care about current events.  I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you already like one or two of the drawings I’ve made, if you’re still watching me at this point.

I’d just like to note that I might be occasionally strident and political from time to time for the next, well, foreseeable future, as long as we have an ACTUAL. FUCKING. TOOL. OF.THE. KREMLIN. IN. WASHINGTON.  I would prefer just to paint sailing ships and stupid pones, but times are what they are and people like me are now under attack from my own fucking government in this climate.  I love the Socialism.  I hate Fascism, Soviet communism, and their various interbred ancestors and descendants, and hate the idea of them growing stronger here.

Creating art is an essentially political act, and don’t let any two-bit neo-nazi pieces of shit tell you otherwise.  What difference it makes is debatable, but what isn’t is that silence is complicity.  Do not be silent.  Do not let others tell you that your fear, that your oppression, that your experience and your identity do not matter.  Do not be gaslighted.  There are four lights, and let no one tell you otherwise.

My first President, and the last I felt any respect for, was Carter.  The first I could vote for was Clinton, and I couldn’t stand him.  The first I could actually vote FOR, rather than against, was Obama, and only the first time around.  I’m an NDN.  I hate the fucking United States, the agent of physical and cultural genocide, that destroyed so much of my people and my culture and my very social fabric.  I hate the flag, I hate the government, I hate every shred of this godsdamn pathetic farce of a Republic that has the balls to call itself a Democracy.  I want to see the US burn, fall, fail harder than Rome ever did.

But.  I still live here. This is my land.  My ancestors’ land, ripped away by the white man’s (and woman’s - the white woman’s complicity in colonial oppression is deep and rarely conveyed) violence and greed.  We have been here, and I mean my cultural group, the NDNs of the Columbian Plateau, TEN THOUSAND years at a BARE MINIMUM -- even white anthropologists and archæologists, some of the most racist academic disciplines, acknowledge this.   When humans in the middle east were first starting to put one sun-fired brick on top of another, we were figuring out how to balance the recources we had and the needs we had.  For thousands of years, my people lived a way that did not degrade the land, and did not require war, or conquest, to maintain that way of life.  What kind of mis-steps led to such a thing, I do not know - I have long assumed that some kind of gross overharvesting/overexploitation of the available resources led to the realization that resources must be managed, and human populations controlled, if there was to be any balance between humans and the landscape that gives us life.

So.  Where am I going?  I don’t know.  I’ve had a cider and just now a beer.  So I’m just expressing at this point, because I’m starting to feel a tiny bit comfortable about my audience here, small (but growing! thank you!) as it is. 

Basically, silence is no longer an option at this point.  Those of you still in your early twenties or so (I don’t want to assume, but demographics say almost half of you are under 24), might not really get what an important place we stand in, right now.  But let me say this directly right now.  Even if you’re well aware of it.

All of our values, and all of the values our founding folks held (regardless of their hypocrisies or defects, etc., etc.) are under attack right now.  The very essence of what is a ‘fact’ is under assault right now.  Science is under assault now.  People who are not white, straight, and devoted to the myth that this is a white, straight nation are under attack right now. 

If you’re white, stop criticising the anger and rage of POC right now.  If you’re male, stop criticising the anger and rage of women right now.  If you’re a Nazi, kindly fuck off and live in the most excruciatingly painful manner possible.  If you see a Nazi get punched in the face and you say ‘well, but...’  fucking ditto, I have no time for your temporizing.  Say ‘well, but...’ one more time, and as a lifelong pacifist who has never yet dirtied their knuckles on anything more offensive than a sheetrock wall, I will happily break your nose and dislocate your testicles, free of charge.

We need to pull together.  I’ll say for one time, and hopefully one time only, I have a hard time with white liberals.  I’ve been betrayed so many times by them.  But we do need you to come to your senses and stop attacking the rest of us who are now genuinely under threat.  Unless you thrust the topic under my nose, I don’t intend to bring it up again (might RB stuff about it tho).  But y’all have had the reins for centuries now, sit down, shut up, and listen.  And that’s the end of that topic.

We all have our own concerns.  I’m not exactly proud, but I have a difficult time in a lot of political debates concerning race, due to the fact that NDNs are consistently shut out.  I try my best to rally myself behind other folks’ suffering, but when it’s usually <this group this group us us us us> or <that group that group me me me me> one gets left on the sidelines sometimes, it is true.  Trumping another victim’s card with your own weighty suit is bullshit, though.  The IDEA of the White Man has fucked us all.

Let me come back to that, because I think it’s important.

THE IDEA OF THE WHITE MAN HAS FUCKED US ALL.

The IDEA of unique importance.  The IDEA of a special place in history and destiny.  The very IDEA of anyone being inferiour.  The IDEA of a mandate over others not of our own people.  The IDEA of absolute rule.  The IDEA of divine right.  The IDEA that being stronger and more violent has anything to do with superiority.

Sadly, all of these are pretty much true of us all, regardless of time or place.  Humans are pretty shitty.  But a certain concatenation of events conspired to place white European males at the temporary top of the heap of worldwide power intrigue, and they went fucking crazy with it.  Crazy in a way that the world has never before seen sort of crazy, setting aside all those cautionary tales of Mu or Atlantea or whatever.  Crazy as in this-single-way-to-live-is-the-only-way-or-else-I’ll-kill-you sort of way (which is, sadly, almost universal).  Whether it be the worship this dead man on a stick or die, or dig gold or die, or slave-in-the-fields-because-you-happen-to-be-darker-than-me-therefore-you-deserve-to-die-horribly-because-this-guy-who-has-the-building-with-the-gold-but-don’t-die-until-I’ve-extracted-every-last-bit-of-labour-I-can-without-expending-any-capital-or-indeed-meaningful-effort-of-my-own.

Again, do I have structure here?  No.  I don’t care about structure.  I’m fed up with being constrained on discourse.  I’m done with letting conventional liberals, white or not, dictate the path and the method by which I expound ideas and express my emotions.  I’ve had a Cider and a Beer, and these days that’s about enough to make it slightly difficult to type straight and copy-edit as I go.  Make that two Beers as I’m half through with the second.  I’m just done with excessive self-restraint in general - though that’s my limit with drinks.

I think that’s my limit on discourse here, though.  I streamed all day, and chatted all day, which was fucking awesome (seriously, you know who you are, I appreciate your support and your interest).  I’m worn out -- by now some of you know fairly well just why that is, and in time all of you who stick around will.  Like so many who differ from the norm, I’m tired of defending the very basics of rational discourse.  I’m tired of Nazis.  I’m tired of Nazi sympathizers.  I’m tired of racists.  I’m tired of those who will ally themselves with racists to further their own worldviews.  I’m tired of White Liberals who try to balance everything because it all comes out of a fucking Textbook and -- well, I’d disgrace myself totally and forfeit any right whatsoever to rational discourse if I posted the clauses I just deleted. D:  Let’s just wrap that up and say I’m tired.  Unless you’ve got a serious legacy of oppression and trauma in your own life as well as your family’s -- this is the time to shut up, sit down, support, and spread your ears wide fucking open.

You might be ‘white’ right now and you might have this shitty legacy of oppression, too.  It’s important to realize that ‘race’ is such an arbitrary constrict -- a good modern starting point is ‘Whiteness of a Different Colour’ (ISBN-13: 978-0674951914) -- and that many of you that might be considered ‘white’ now weren’t ‘white’ a mere century or less ago.  If you’re of Irish, or Scottish, or Italian, or any country with any modicum of Catholicism, or anywhere near Poland at all (for fuck’s sake I want the US to burn but I wish I could apologise for those Polish jokes), I hope you’re nodding right now.  ‘Whiteness’ has always been a fluid definition, subject to the convenience of those who are in power.  Sometimes you’re in, sometimes you’re out.  A lot of people last year were convinced along these lines, alas. Especially white women -- it’s hard to say, but I am deeply disappointed in any gender whose space I drift into regularly --- where’s my fucking third option, thank you very much, please, reality, let LeGuin’s writing instantiate.  The amount of white women who voted for a... thing that despised their very gender was, quite frankly, so astonishing, even disgusting, that it was hard to credit. 

So at this point I think it’s important to distinguish between two groups: those that explicitly benefit form the current regime, and those who don’t.  Establishing the basic premiss that I’m not particularly inclined to either nuance or compromise at this point, I think I can draw the lines thus:

With the Orange one are Nazis (or Neo-Nazis if you want to split hairs, I see zero fucking difference), other forms of White Nationalists, the KKK, Kremlin sympathizers, and a general cadre of the most ignorant and least qualified set of people ever set to take government positions, even factoring in the presidencies of Grant and Hoover.  These people deny science, deny facts, deny the right of people like me to exist.  I don’t believe in anything but the serious danger of absolute belief.  But I do trust and have some shred, some modicum of faith, one might even go so far as to say, in scientific method, rational skepticism, tolerance, and love.

These people that are scrabbling for the levers of power have none of these things.  They want unquestioning obedience, slavish devotion, denial of diversity.  They want us to believe their lies, their ‘alternative facts’ or whatever the shit was that’s so ridiculous my fore-brain refuses to scrabble for the correct terminology.

But this isn’t the 1920s or the 1930s.  Remember that the well-nigh universal lesson from that time regarding Fascism is that people didn’t strike back hard enough, fast enough, strong enough.  Don’t succumb to the idea that it’s worth your while to debate people who don’t accept your simple existence and your equal rights as a basic, fundamental point.  If they don’t, punch them if you can.  Or find a bigger friend to punch them.  Kick them in the balls -- most of these Nazis have balls, I know not how -- or hit them with a bat, or a bat with nails in.

Remember.

If.

They.

Do.

Not.

Unconditionally.

Acknowledge.

Your.

Right.

To.

Exist.

As.

A.

Basic.

Premise.

There.

Is.

No.

Intellectual.

Debate.

Nazis and their ilk don’t want people like me, or many of you, to even exist.  (I look at every follower’s profile, you delightful people and sometimes perverts [me too, no worries - even some aces get saucy every few dozen moons or so!  I love you all, apart from those strange porn blogs, I don’t draw naked anything yet, please go away.])  Even after deflecting myself there, I re-emphasize that:

DEBATE CAN ONLY OCCUR WHEN BOTH PARTIES AGREE TO A CERTAIN SET OF FACTS AND PHILOSOPHICAL PREMISES.  Foremost in 2017 being: an acceptance of the scientific method and of the complexities and conclusions of modern science, an acceptance to the basic freedoms of the press and of political discourse as established from our flawed founding fuckers to the current day, and an acceptance of the basic rights of all human beings irrespective of ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

Anyone who can’t agree to this basic, fundamental, and fundamentally inoffensive set of premises is not worth your time or energy.  If they try and throw sand in your face, avert them.  If they put up a mask of civility, state the basics and deflect them.  If they assault or insult you, ignore them, or if appropriate, punch them -- at this point, they deserve it.  As a life-long pacifist -- they so deserve it.

Keep your thumb outside of your fingers, please.  I want you to be able to draw even after you punch Nazis.

Remember:

Anyone who does not acknowledge your right to exist has not established the most fundamental level of Rational Discourse.

I’ll try as best I can to keep this blog to mainly just art, but I refuse and reject all notions that I should keep politics out of my art.  The act of intentionally creating a piece of art is an essentially political act, it always has been, and it always shall be.

On that point, I’ll allow one exchange to give you a chance before I block your arse on whatever platform.  I DGAF about followers, sales, or bottom lines, tiny though they may be. All I want are people who I can have a rational discourse with.

I wish I could say I’m sorry to be so angry. 

I am absolutely not

.  I refuse to let my anger dominate my day to day living, but I also refuse to put it aside, and I think you should too.  Don’t let go of that anger, but don’t let it eat your heart (it will eviscerate you in a breath if you let it.)  Forge it into a sword, into a shield, into a bow and arrows to give cover to your loved ones.  This is not a time for complacency, for conciliation for those who would not have us live at all.  Recognize that there is a point at which rational debate has come to an end, that there are those who want us dead and are not at all joking with all those oven threats. NAZIS FUCKING EXIST RIGHT NOW.  Just as their vile counterparts have existed at so many times throughout history.I could name to you ancestors that were killed, or sent to prison, or locked in mad-houses, or worse, simply because they were NDN and said that we should have rights, that we should be treated like human beings, that we DESERVED to EXIST.  I have zero patience for the establishment or the White Man in Washington.  I have some patience for the White Woman, even though they have often been a worse oppressor than the Man (seriously -- look at the treatment of ‘Natives’ in ‘America’ and Indians in India in the periods when it was just the by far majority male explorers, trappers, traders, etc, compared to when the women come in -- rapid swings between Tolerance and Accomodation, to Prejudice and Exclusion, all overcome with the Sickening Sweet Smell of Straight-Laced Biblical Morality and okay I can’t go on, if you are still reading I haven’t completely offended you and I would honestly not prefer to do so excessively.)  but it’s really hard to trust in straight white women at this point.  So many sold us out to a self-confessed ‘p*ssy grabber’ in November. ANYWAY. Anger blah blah arg razzle frazzle argiuhalsdkfgjalkdfgjh lasidfuyao psidgyoiasdygoi asydfgo iasdygpoiasdo et cetera, et  cetera, et. cetera. yeah. welcome to 2017. Let’s all go punch Nazis.  Or, if we can’t punch Nazis, let’s all support those who do. Because what’s more American than punching a Nazi in his (or her) Godsdamned face.